1) Controllable sea and air mount. Obviously it would be impractical to give players control over the boat or ship lol so I propose give the chocobo the ability to swim and fly. If it can free roam on land there is no reason why we cant have the ability to free roam the sea and sky. Naturallly there would be some quest to obtaining this privilege, maybe a BST only privilege (although i would prefer it to be available to all jobs). Maybe you could breed chocobos like in FF7 until you got a certain colour which could swim, then fly, or both. (Eg the gold chocobo from previous ffs). Maybe you could level the chocobo to 99 and it learns to swim at 30 and fly at 60? I suppose this is purely from an aesthetical point of view of how cool it would look and the fun factor, but they could also create an expansion with cities in the sky, or places in sealed mountain ranges etc to make it have more purpose. All the previous ffs did this via a controllable airship late game. Imagine how cool it would be with the graphics and world of this game to free roam the sea and sky with your chocobo.

2) Change jobs on the go please. Maybe place a mog at the entrance to dungeons which allow this, or just have the option available on the view house menu when outside towns. I might want to teleport-dem myself (instead of shouting for it) and then change to mnk/war straight away. Obviously all buffs would reset etc. They did it with accessing items on the go so I dont see why they couldnt with this

3) Voice Acting. Cutscenes in any game are odd without voice acting. Imagine a film with no sound its just stupid. It kind of lessens the experience for me.

4) Make the quest logs more detailed. Some of them are really vague and its very easy to forget what the finer details of the quest were if you flagged it days, or months ago.

5) Have more slots on the Auction House. 7 is pathetic. Maybe 20? Obviously this would increase the delivery box too but that would be a good thing. Also include a search function so you dont have to trawl through the lists searching for some item

6) Make it possible to trade 8 stacks at once to the guy in selbina (millioncorn, la thiene cabbage, boyahda moss

7) Make it possible to switch servers as many times as you want and for free

8) Have a home point warp on all field manuals, not just dungeon ones.

9) Include a Beastiary. Would be great to be able to check detailed info on monsters regularly. Also give us a feature to freely listen to the music of this game. Maybe have a BRD quest to unlock the various pieces from your homepoint on a grammaphone or something lol, or just even simpler once youve visited an area its unlocked.

10) Crafting. When you join a guild have the npcs sell recipe scrolls or quest them. There is absolutely no mention of it and i find it strange as a player youre forced to read a faq.

11) Include more chat commands. There are several emotions etc ive tried that dont work because obviously thyre not programmed in to the game.

First, the question is always whether you'd rather have one of these improvements or new content. Developer resources are limited, and implementing any one of these takes those resources away from things like new content. So any update has not just to be worth doing, it has to be worth doing more than something else major.

Nezkeys79 wrote:

1) Controllable sea and air mount. Obviously it would be impractical to give players control over the boat or ship lol so I propose give the chocobo the ability to swim and fly. If it can free roam on land there is no reason why we cant have the ability to free roam the sea and sky. Naturallly there would be some quest to obtaining this privilege, maybe a BST only privilege (although i would prefer it to be available to all jobs). Maybe you could breed chocobos like in FF7 until you got a certain colour which could swim, then fly, or both. (Eg the gold chocobo from previous ffs). Maybe you could level the chocobo to 99 and it learns to swim at 30 and fly at 60? I suppose this is purely from an aesthetical point of view of how cool it would look and the fun factor, but they could also create an expansion with cities in the sky, or places in sealed mountain ranges etc to make it have more purpose. All the previous ffs did this via a controllable airship late game. Imagine how cool it would be with the graphics and world of this game to free roam the sea and sky with your chocobo.

First, on a personal level, chocobo raising (which is already part of the game, including colours) is a time sink I find much more boring than most of the other time sinks. If it was a benefit of chocobo racing, would it be just as desirable? How would you like to have to win 100 chocobo races during wind weather to unlock access to some new zone?

Second, getting around Vana'diel is firmly established in the lore and storyline. Chocobos would have to have developed flight overnight with a total disregard for the canon storyline, especially CoP. If chocobos could fly, we'd know it by now.

Very few people nowadays use any form of travel that's not instant. I personally take airships, chocobos, and ferries, whenever I'm not in a hurry because it looks cool and is fun, but I suspect I'm in a distinct minority. You can be sure that if it was required to get to new zones, player outcry would quickly get it supplanted by some kind of warp. Even the Wajaom Woodlands warp, a shortcut for the ferry, isn't used anymore because it's too slow for the player base. Instant travel rules. So you'd have the developers work out a whole new set of content and travel methods, add mechanisms to fly over current zones (have you thought just how hard that would be? Zone terrain is designed for ground level view, no higher), all for three months of use that would be moaned about all the time. People don't take the airship to Windurst -- why would they take a flying chocobo instead once the novelty wore off?

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2) Change jobs on the go please. Maybe place a mog at the entrance to dungeons which allow this, or just have the option available on the view house menu when outside towns. I might want to teleport-dem myself (instead of shouting for it) and then change to mnk/war straight away. Obviously all buffs would reset etc. They did it with accessing items on the go so I dont see why they couldnt with this

This is why you'd use a Teleport-Dem Ring instead of changing your sub to WHM and back. Or you could Voidwatch Warp to Gusgen Mines and run from there. Or Abyssea warp to the Konschadt Highlands maw.

These days, with so many instant travel options, access to the mog house is pretty fast. Going back to change jobs and come back isn't the 20-minute task it used to be -- chances are you can do it now in less than 5 over 90% of Vana'diel.

It's just not that big a deal. Not a big enough deal to make a Moogle Ring that will call your Mog House Moogle to you wherever you are, which is essentially what you want. You only want one in particular places, sure, but just because you know which places you'd want one doesn't mean everyone else would want the same places. If they did this and missed out the places you want, you still wouldn't be happy.

And once again, remember that just because they could do it, doesn't mean they should. What content would you be willing to give up for this? No matter how small, any new feature means there's another potential new feature you can't have because there's limited development budget and resources. This is just not that big a deal these days to want to delay SoA another two weeks, for example.

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3) Voice Acting. Cutscenes in any game are odd without voice acting. Imagine a film with no sound its just stupid. It kind of lessens the experience for me.

The sheer cost and time to revoice all existing cutscenes (all missions, all quests, all NPC interaction) would be immense, especially when you consider it has to be done for all language versions. SE would have to drop all updates to FFXI for several years to pay for this out of the budget. Just don't ***** when it's done in Japanese first and you have no new content while they do it before they even start on the English version. That alone makes this a Heck No!

Films without sound... I guess you've never seen "Metropolis", "Birth of a Nation", or any of the Chaplin movies? Composition for silent media has different requirements to make it not "stupid", of course, but that doesn't mean it can't be done. Do you ever read a book, or do you just listen to audiobooks?

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4) Make the quest logs more detailed. Some of them are really vague and its very easy to forget what the finer details of the quest were if you flagged it days, or months ago.

Not unreasonable, but a lot of work for no new content. Talking to the start NPC usually gives you a refresher on what you were supposed to do.

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5) Have more slots on the Auction House. 7 is pathetic. Maybe 20? Obviously this would increase the delivery box too but that would be a good thing. Also include a search function so you dont have to trawl through the lists searching for some item

This one has been suggested since 2004 at least. Since it hasn't been done yet, it won't be. Ever. Main argument is RMT, of course.

You can sort the AH items alphabetically or by level. That makes it pretty easy to find. Sometimes the categories are a little obscure, I'll give you that, but it's pretty easy when you get used to it.

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6) Make it possible to trade 8 stacks at once to the guy in selbina (millioncorn, la thiene cabbage, boyahda moss

This one isn't a bad request, but I doubt it's practical. Trading a dozen stacks of bat wings for Fear of the Dark wouldn't be bad either. Still, RMT concerns rear their ugly head again. Mechanistically, it's easy to see why it isn't done that way: the NPC accepts just what is required to fulfill that instance of the quest. To accept more, that instance must be completed and the quest reset. At least you don't have to count out the quest items precisely, trade more and he'll take only what he wants that time.

Honestly, though, you only have to do this particular most annoying of trade-item quests once in the entire playing time of a character. Is it really worth revamping the entire NPC quest mechanics just to make this one quest easier?

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7) Make it possible to switch servers as many times as you want and for free

To be honest, I really don't care much about this. I'm sure there's an RMT objection to this one too, of course, but it's something that would require minimal resources to implement.

The philosophical catch is that FFXI (even now) is still a community-based game. Encouraging server swaps (which this would do) is against that principle.

There are a few good reasons to switch servers: to join friends, to avoid un-friends, to join specific linkshells, and to acquire Alexandrite. (Seriously, Alexandrite can be rare enough that you can't get enough of it from just one server even if you have the cash for it.) Aside from the last of those, if you're still not getting on with the community after a couple of server switches, you probably aren't doing it right (or you're a serial LS-stealer, but...).

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9) Include a Beastiary. Would be great to be able to check detailed info on monsters regularly. Also give us a feature to freely listen to the music of this game. Maybe have a BRD quest to unlock the various pieces from your homepoint on a grammaphone or something lol, or just even simpler once youve visited an area its unlocked.

Just buy the CD or listen on youtube. You can do that in one browser tab while looking up monster details in another.

(DAT-mining aside) it would not necessarily be great to be able to do this right away. My first forays into Abyssea, for example, were into the complete unknown. No-one knew how things worked, or what the monsters could do, and it added to the excitement of the new expansion. Some things are still a mystery, and more interesting because of it (Almightly Apkallu, for example). If you want to find out the details, it's simple enough these days through the various wikis.

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10) Crafting. When you join a guild have the npcs sell recipe scrolls or quest them. There is absolutely no mention of it and i find it strange as a player youre forced to read a faq.

If you talk to the NPC long enough, he'll tell you the recipes. One at a time. :)

9 & 10 both really come down to the same thing: in-game or in a browser, if you want the details you'll have to go look them up anyway. SE's resources are better spent on new content than on something the player base has done (or will do) anyway. You have a choice of at least three good wikis: ZAM, ffxiclopedia, and bluefgartr. Having that in-game as well would be redundant.

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11) Include more chat commands. There are several emotions etc ive tried that dont work because obviously thyre not programmed in to the game.

As to the voice acting.... It's also a matter of space. MP3s do take up room, and FFXI is approaching the 20 GB marker in size even without it. Adding MP3s for voice acted cutscenes would double or triple that - effectively crowding out the Xboxes and PS3s with their itty bitty hard drives.

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FFXI: Catwho on Bismarck: Retired December 2014

Thayos wrote:

I can't understand anyone who skips the cutscenes of a Final Fantasy game. That's like going to Texas and not getting barbecue.

I personally take airships, chocobos, and ferries, whenever I'm not in a hurry because it looks cool and is fun

EXACTLY. I did say it was mainly from an aesthetical standpoint. However if they made it functional in the way I suggested I would not complain about. Just because you would doesnt mean everyone else would. Too many players moan about cool stuff or things that might make things a little harder. I say go play tetris to them

Yes silent movies are boring, just like black and white movies. Its 2012 not 1912.

And no quite a few of the quest givers do not give you the same dialogue as when you accepted the quest. Constantly checking wikis is no different than checking a walkthrough/FAQ which is pointless cause you're not really playing the game and just reading how to finish it. Thats not my idea of a challenge and certainly disrupts the flow/experience of the adventure ...vanadiel>desktop err wtf?

I dont know what RMT is but 7 items on the AH is simply not good enough. There is simply no excuse for it

Regarding the Millioncorn quest...yeah but to get max fame it invloves doing some very difficult quests and doing lots of crappy quests to even flag them. Many other npc can be traded several of the same item at once (crystals etc). I also propose SE give us a feature to multi-buy, and multi-sell. Even if they limited this to the same type of item it would be a start, but I would prefer it to be on any item. Again its 2012, not 1990 (even rpgs then had this tho lol)

I do not understand your logic for allowing all FFXI players to freely mingle...you say this goes against a community based game. How exactly do you figure that?

Regarding playing cds or playing youtube when i back out to desktop the same point applies about ruining the adventure. I dont want to turn the sound off! And those that want to can still turn it off and carry on listening to their cd or sitting their in silence (toggle on/off in menu etc). Same applies with beastiary. I dont want to constantly check a wiki to find stuff out I want it in game in a easy to read beastiary like lots of other games do instead of faffing about on sites wasting time i could be in game with

Regarding crafting absolutely no npcs have given me a recipe for any craft. Ive had to have a player tell me (who has most likely read a wiki to find it out), or tell me to go to a wiki....see above once again

The chat commands are obviously limited. Many of the /??? i try do nothing. Theyre just no where near as creative with this as they could be

Yes silent movies are boring, just like black and white movies. Its 2012 not 1912.

What generation did you grow up in. There is a wonderful thing called imagination. My generation, and I am still pretty young 28 yrs old, used this all the **** time. Try it might make your gaming more fun

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I dont know what RMT is but 7 items on the AH is simply not good enough. There is simply no excuse for it

RMT = Real Money Trader. While this flies in other mmo's it caused a lot of headaches and trouble in this one. Don't know i fully agree with they being the reason we only have 7 slots but why is it such a big deal. You can bazzar things and let your character run over night, while at work or just gone.

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Regarding the Millioncorn quest...yeah but to get max fame it invloves doing some very difficult quests and doing lots of crappy quests to even flag them. Many other npc can be traded several of the same item at once (crystals etc). I also propose SE give us a feature to multi-buy, and multi-sell. Even if they limited this to the same type of item it would be a start, but I would prefer it to be on any item. Again its 2012, not 1990 (even rpgs then had this tho lol)

Crystals you mentioned I assume you mean to the guard npc. Get over having to trade what is asked for in exact amounts by NPC. It is, after all, what they want. Be it repetable or not.

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Regarding crafting absolutely no npcs have given me a recipe for any craft. Ive had to have a player tell me (who has most likely read a wiki to find it out), or tell me to go to a wiki....see above once again

Do what those of us that started the game at release. Try random things. How do you think those FAQs/guides were created?

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The chat commands are obviously limited. Many of the /??? i try do nothing. Theyre just no where near as creative with this as they could be

As suggested, /em and write what you like. There is that imagination thing again. It really is alot better then those flashy cgi animations you children are so into.

I guess I don't miss voice acting because I'm a natural bookworm and watching movies in theaters gives me migraines unless I have in earplugs, and I only watch television when someone else has bothered to put something on.

I can read just fine.

And due to disability requirements, even if there's full voice acting in a cutscene, it's got to have subtitles (at least as an option) too. Deaf people also play video games.

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FFXI: Catwho on Bismarck: Retired December 2014

Thayos wrote:

I can't understand anyone who skips the cutscenes of a Final Fantasy game. That's like going to Texas and not getting barbecue.